Are we heading toward a full-scale conflict with Iran? 🇮🇷🔥 In this urgent and insightful briefing, Colonel Douglas Macgregor (Ret.) lays out the growing risks, strategic missteps, and political agendas pushing the U.S. closer to war 🇺🇸⚔️.
From escalating tensions in the Middle East 🌍 to provocations in the Strait of Hormuz and shifting alliances, Macgregor warns that Washington’s current trajectory may leave diplomacy sidelined and war as the only remaining option .
Is this a preventable crisis—or a path already chosen? Get the expert military analysis and sober outlook the mainstream won’t show you.
#DouglasMacgregor #IranCrisis #MiddleEastTensions #USIran #WarWithIran #Geopolitics #MilitaryAnalysis #IranConflict #WarDrums #ForeignPolicy #USMilitary #StrategicRisk #TruthBombs #ColMacgregor #GlobalAffairs #BreakingNews #DefenseWatch #DiplomacyNow #WorldNews #NoMoreWar
From escalating tensions in the Middle East 🌍 to provocations in the Strait of Hormuz and shifting alliances, Macgregor warns that Washington’s current trajectory may leave diplomacy sidelined and war as the only remaining option .
Is this a preventable crisis—or a path already chosen? Get the expert military analysis and sober outlook the mainstream won’t show you.
#DouglasMacgregor #IranCrisis #MiddleEastTensions #USIran #WarWithIran #Geopolitics #MilitaryAnalysis #IranConflict #WarDrums #ForeignPolicy #USMilitary #StrategicRisk #TruthBombs #ColMacgregor #GlobalAffairs #BreakingNews #DefenseWatch #DiplomacyNow #WorldNews #NoMoreWar
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NewsTranscript
00:00Transcribed by —
00:30Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
00:35Today is Tuesday, May 20th, 2025.
00:39Colonel Douglas McGregor is here, and here's the question.
00:43How close is the United States to war with Iran?
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02:17Colonel McGregor, welcome here, my dear friend.
02:20I do want to talk to you at some length on your observations and conclusions about the likelihood of war with Iran,
02:28but first to some issues involving Ukraine, particularly animated by President Trump's two-hour phone call with President Putin.
02:38Do you think the Americans understand the Kremlin's mentality that it would not and hasn't historically stopped fighting for the purpose of negotiating,
02:54that it has conducted both negotiations and fighting at the same time,
02:58and secondly, that it will hold fast to its initial demands, which were part of the agreement in Istanbul
03:05and which it expects to achieve by the special military operation?
03:11I think the easy answer is no.
03:13I don't think we have the slightest idea how the Russians think about their country and about this war.
03:21That's one of the major problems.
03:23We have a bad habit of projecting onto the Russians an intellectual framework or a cultural framework, which is our own.
03:33And as a result, it's very hard for us to understand them.
03:36They are willing to negotiate, but keep in mind, we are a co-belligerent.
03:42We're in no position to mediate a solution or an agreement of any kind.
03:47We are part of the problem.
03:49So they're happy to talk to us, but they're not going to cease operations until we demonstrate conclusively that the Ukrainians and we will respect the initial position that they've always taken.
04:03So until we do that, nothing will change.
04:06And I don't see much evidence that we're going to do what is required.
04:09I think we're already talking about walking away from it.
04:12At least that's my impression from the things that Mr. Rubio has said and Vice President Vance has said.
04:19Here's what President Putin had to say after the conversation with President Trump.
04:28I thought he was very astute, saying our key objectives have always been the same, to identify the root causes of this military operation.
04:36The President of the United States and I agreed that Russia can and is ready to work with Ukraine on a memorandum on the possible eventual future peace treaty by addressing a number of provisions,
04:58including that we need to set forth the principles and the deadlines for achieving a peace deal.
05:05And this includes the possible cessation of hostilities for a specific period of time if we reach a specific agreement.
05:17This gives us hope that overall we're headed in the right direction.
05:24This was a very constructive conversation.
05:26I think that both Russia and Ukraine must do everything to contribute to peace and they must find the compromises that would suit all the parties involved.
05:43I would like to say that overall Russia's position is clear.
05:48Our key objective is to identify the root causes of this crisis.
05:57We all know what the Russian objective is.
06:01He stated it before the war started.
06:04It was restated again in the agreement that the Russians and the Ukrainians agreed to before Joe Biden and Boris Johnson talked then lawfully President Zelensky out of it.
06:15We all know what those agreements were.
06:17Is there any reason to think that Vladimir Putin would change his mind?
06:21He's on the cusp of a military victory.
06:24No, I don't think so.
06:25But there's also no reason to expect that Mr. Zelensky is going to accept those conditions.
06:32He's not going to accept the permanent incorporation of the eastern oblasts into Russia,
06:38along with the legitimate ownership of Crimea in Russian hands.
06:44He said that repeatedly.
06:46So under those circumstances, it's hard to imagine anything good coming out of this,
06:50although I think President Trump has a habit of hearing what he wants to hear.
06:55And I think he heard a willingness to end the war, which is which is clear.
07:01Nobody nobody in Russia wants this war to go on in perpetuity.
07:05Least of all Vladimir Putin, they've lost 120, 130,000 killed.
07:11I don't know how many wounded Ukrainian losses, of course, are much higher.
07:17Probably 1.5 million killed in action.
07:20How many wounded is anybody's guess.
07:23But Zelensky is in no mood to accommodate anything connected with Russia's core position.
07:31Well, then then there will be no amicable resolution of this.
07:36It'll be a military resolution or there'll be some new government in Ukraine that will resolve it by by treaty.
07:46Well, you know, you know, judge, it's also pretty clear if you look at the numbers of discontented officers and soldiers in the Ukrainian army,
07:56that if fighting were to stop in eastern Ukraine for any length of time,
08:01I think tens of thousands of Ukrainian veterans would turn their attentions to Zelensky in Kiev.
08:09And I don't think he would survive it.
08:11I think there's great bitterness right now in the field towards the regime in Kiev.
08:16They hold him responsible for these massive losses and dramatic failures.
08:22I don't think there's an understanding of that in the Trump administration at all.
08:27If they understood that, they would go back and do what we've urged them to do from the very beginning.
08:32President Trump says this is not his war.
08:34Okay.
08:35End all further aid to this government in Ukraine and pull us out.
08:41Get all the Americans that are in Ukraine, military or otherwise, intelligent, civilian.
08:45They all leave.
08:46All he's done by failing to do that is extend the Biden policy.
08:51Sadly.
08:53You know, he said it as recently as yesterday, and it irritates me when he says it,
08:58because he should accept responsibility for the war that he's funding.
09:03Chris, cut number nine.
09:06This was not my war.
09:08This is not a war that would have happened if I were president.
09:10This is not my war.
09:12I'm just here to try and help.
09:14We've spent hundreds of billions of dollars on this war.
09:20And yet that's not, frankly, we made much more than that just in four days in the Middle East.
09:28It's a lot of money, but we do much.
09:31This is about thousands of people dying every single week.
09:35Five thousand, six thousand people dying every single week.
09:39You know, these soldiers, they say goodbye in Ukraine and in Russia.
09:45And then their parents never see him again, except maybe in pictures of horrible scenes,
09:49because I've seen some scenes I've never seen anything like it.
09:51So we're going to see if we can get it taken care of.
09:54Yep.
09:55I mean, much of this is just irresponsible for him to say it's not his war,
10:00but five to six thousand people have died.
10:02That's 60 to 65 thousand people since he became president.
10:07How long would Ukraine last if Trump says to Hegseth, close the spigot, stop sending them weapons and ammunition?
10:14I suspect a few weeks at most.
10:17You know, they're in very dire straits as it is right now.
10:21But, you know, President Trump seems to lack self-awareness, Judge.
10:25He doesn't seem to grasp that he is monumentally responsible for this war continuing.
10:31Our cash, our equipment continues to pour in.
10:34The recent attacks or attempted attacks on the 9 May celebration in Red Square consisted of A.T.A.C.M.'s missiles.
10:43They didn't show up magically on their own.
10:46They didn't come from Great Britain or Germany.
10:49They're ours.
10:50Surely he must understand that.
10:52It didn't.
10:54Doesn't make sense.
10:55Didn't the first Trump administration, this is what he was impeached over, as ill-advised as the impeachment was,
11:02send an enormous amount of military equipment to Ukraine?
11:06I'm talking about 2017 to 2021.
11:10Joe Biden wasn't president.
11:11Trump was.
11:12Yes.
11:13He consistently fails to remember that.
11:16I don't think he ever grasped what was really happening on the ground in Ukraine.
11:21This was presented to him as more foreign aid and military assistance to a future NATO member.
11:29What does he know about Ukraine?
11:31Nothing.
11:33Does he know about Russia?
11:34Frankly, nothing.
11:35So, again, you get this transactional response.
11:40Look at all the money we just effectively garnered during our trip to Saudi Arabia and the Emirates.
11:47We'll set aside whether or not that's actual and real and just think about that statement.
11:53And we've lost hundreds of billions in Ukraine.
11:57What is going on here?
11:59You know, this is not the art of the deal.
12:03We're talking about national interests and the survival of peoples and nations.
12:08It doesn't seem to sink in with him at all.
12:12Do you think the Russians understand that there are two disparate teams that whisper into his ear,
12:19the American firsters like the vice president and Mr. Witkoff and the neocons like Sebastian Gorka and Marco Rubio?
12:31I don't know what the vice president is saying because the vice president is equally uninformed about Ukraine and Russia.
12:40I don't see much evidence he understands what's happening over there.
12:43The only thing he has said, which is to his credit, is I think we should terminate this and move on.
12:50OK, thank you very much.
12:52But there's no understanding of what that means.
12:55How do you terminate it?
12:56And you have to terminate it along the lines we just discussed.
13:00You can't make statements and say, well, I've had it.
13:02We're leaving.
13:03We're walking out.
13:04You have to end the aid and you have to start withdrawing everyone who's part of it.
13:10This is the problem the Europeans are having, because on the one hand, he says these things.
13:15I want to end this and this is bad.
13:18And then he turns around and tells Europeans that the Russians are now flexible and willing to negotiate and are ready to sign up for a ceasefire.
13:25When they know categorically that's not true, because the initial conditions that the Russians have always stipulated have not been met.
13:34So I think there's confusion across the board.
13:37The only people that are not confused are Moscow and Zelensky.
13:42Zelensky knows what he wants, which may involve the complete death of his own country, his nation.
13:48But that's what he's going to stand on.
13:50Colonel Tom Fletcher, who's the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, told the National Security Council yesterday
14:01that 14,000 Gazan babies will die in the next 48 hours, 48 hours if they don't get nutrition.
14:14And that 5,000 of them died in the past two weeks.
14:21Whatever happened to the resistance we heard about?
14:25Whatever happened to the utter moral revulsion about what's happening in Gaza and the determination to use force to stop it?
14:36Well, it doesn't exist in the United States for all intents and purposes.
14:42I don't see any evidence for it.
14:44I think that the Israel lobby has absolute unchallenged control over what's happening on the ground in Gaza.
14:53And that means that people in Washington are going to unconditionally support Mr. Netanyahu
14:59and whatever he decides to do with the forces at his disposal.
15:03There's nothing that's changed.
15:06You know, I remember Gaza is this wonderful piece of real estate
15:09that if it were only simply developed the right way, it would be a mecca for everyone.
15:15That's the president's view.
15:18I don't know what to make of it.
15:19What about resistance in the Middle East, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey?
15:25There must be revulsion amongst the masses.
15:28They see this stuff on their mobile devices.
15:32There is, but all of these governments, and this is very important for everybody to understand,
15:37are afraid of U.S. military intervention on Israel's side against them.
15:44If they were dealing exclusively with Israel, that would be different.
15:48But no one really wants to go to war with us.
15:52I mean, this is something you and I have discussed over and over and over again for years.
15:56No one in the world is interested in going to war with us.
15:59We're the ones that are talking about war all the time.
16:03So that's number one.
16:04They want to do business with us.
16:05Number two, if you're an Egyptian, you probably feel comfortable with dealing with the IDF.
16:11In other words, if you have to fight them, you can fight them.
16:14But what do you do if hundreds of aircraft fly off of carriers and come in from overseas
16:20to utterly devastate you on behalf of Israel?
16:25And right now, that's what they expect.
16:28The Turks, of course, would like to extract benefits from their cooperation with us.
16:32And by the way, one of the things that nobody brings up is one of the key reasons that President Trump went to the region
16:39and ultimately talked to this man Jelani and shook his hand and talked about what an attractive young man he is,
16:46is because he's trying to hold together this CIA-Mossad brokered alliance between the Turks and the Israelis.
16:54It is the joint hegemony over the region that we are trying to promote with Turkish and Israeli military power.
17:03It's very fragile because the Turks collectively as people are utterly opposed to everything the Israelis are doing.
17:10I don't think it's going to last.
17:12But Mr. Erdogan sees great value in it.
17:15And Mr. Jelani, you know, people are saying he's a CIA asset.
17:19Okay, fine, perhaps he is, but he's very definitely Mr. Erdogan's asset.
17:24And so you're signaling to President Erdogan, I'm going to go along with what you want to do,
17:29just as I'm going to go along with what Mr. Netanyahu wants to do.
17:32Boy, Erdogan has his finger in so many pies.
17:34He's in NATO.
17:35He's in bricks.
17:36He's got his finger in this pie.
17:38Foreign Minister Lavrov, who's in Rio de Janeiro today for some reason while there,
17:45condemned Al Jelani and said he's engaged in ethnic cleansing against Alawites and against Christians.
17:53Sure.
17:54And the Kremlin's not happy with that.
17:56I don't know what they're going to do about it.
17:57They still have a small naval base there.
18:00But I thought it was rather telling that he made that comment,
18:03knowing that a comment like that from him would make it around the world internationally.
18:07I saw it in The Guardian.
18:09Well, the Russians are trying to protect the Alawites that are within range of their base.
18:14The Alawites have tended to pull back towards the coast in the direction of the Russian military base.
18:20And remember that Erdogan has instructed Jelani and his legions, whatever they are, not to attack the Russians.
18:27So I think the Russians are going to do whatever they can.
18:30Remember, the Russians have always been prepared to intervene on behalf of Christian populations under attack.
18:35By the way, the Iranians also saved Christians from destruction when they were fighting ISIS.
18:44Christian lives were saved along with the Shiite lives.
18:47So this is an ongoing problem in the region.
18:51Iran and Russia are both involved in that.
18:54But there's another feature to all of this, and you brought it up when you mentioned BRICS.
18:58The other reason for the president's activities in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates is to try and persuade them not to become part of BRICS,
19:07to stay out of the sort of Chinese herd of potential cooperative customers.
19:14Well, that's impossible.
19:16They're going to join BRICS.
19:17It doesn't matter what we say or do.
19:19But they also want to do business with us.
19:22This is something that I don't think President Trump understands just yet.
19:25Colonel, how important is the issue of nuclear enrichment and the negotiations that Secretary of State Witkoff,
19:35slightly tongue-in-cheek there, is negotiating with Iran?
19:39Because at one point he was saying we will allow a certain level of enrichment for civilian uses, energy, hospitals, etc.
19:47On the weekend talk shows, he said zero enrichment.
19:51So somebody got to him.
19:52Now he's a neocon.
19:54Is zero enrichment a non-starter with respect to negotiating with Iran?
19:59Why would they give up all enrichment?
20:03Clearly, remember, they're not going to give up all enrichment.
20:07They've made that abundantly clear.
20:09That's why the talks are dead.
20:10Mr. Witkoff is simply repeating the instructions that were given to President Trump by Mr. Netanyahu.
20:18It is Mr. Netanyahu that said that's off the table.
20:21We cannot tolerate any enrichment of any kind.
20:25He's also made it clear that he and Israel will not tolerate the presence of all these ballistic missiles that could reach them.
20:33In other words, we're back to the Libyan model.
20:36That's the model he wants.
20:38Now, President Trump hasn't been willing to support that, at least not on the whole.
20:43But President Trump has now, obviously, through Mr. Witkoff, agreed there can't be any enrichment.
20:49This puts us in the unfortunate position of having to follow through on enormous numbers of threats that we've made to strike Iran.
20:57I don't see how we avoid it.
20:59And I think that's what Mr. Netanyahu wants.
21:02Our friend Alistair Crook, who readily admits he's not a military person and says by name that you know far more about the military than he ever will,
21:13is of the belief that the United States cannot defeat Iran if we attack it with the Israelis.
21:21What's your view on that?
21:23Well, the key thing is that if you're going to attack Israel with air and naval power, in other words, essentially missiles and bombs, what is your goal?
21:35What do you expect to accomplish?
21:37Now, I don't think anybody on the United States Armed Forces believes that our goal is to ultimately defeat Iran.
21:45If you want to defeat the Iranian state, well, then you're going to have to introduce ground forces into the mix.
21:51Air and naval power alone isn't going to achieve that.
21:53So I don't think the objective is to, quote, unquote, defeat Iran.
21:57I think the objective will be to defeat their integrated air defenses and defeat their missile attacks while at the same time destroying the nuclear capability on the ground to enrich and also potentially to destroy the regime.
22:14Because there have been lots of statements suggesting if we're going to go in there, then we have to target the regime itself, hopefully then leaving Iran leaderless and incoherent.
22:25Now, I don't think those things are achievable, but it's not defeat Iran.
22:31It's what I just described.
22:32And I think there are a lot of people in the Air Force and the Navy, senior officers, telling the president that, yes, we think we can do that.
22:42Can Netanyahu and his partners in the American government, which is a large array of people, talk Trump into this sort of an attack on Iran
22:53simply because they won't agree on an enrichment number, a concept that the American public won't grasp?
23:04I think that what has got to happen to make all of this come together is the Israelis have to take the lead.
23:11And this has always been my concern, that Mr. Netanyahu would make it impossible for us to stay out by taking the lead in terms of attacking Iran.
23:22Iran then, in response, would probably let everything they've got go at Israel.
23:28In other words, it would trigger a massive response from Iran.
23:32That, in turn, would trigger us to try and intervene and protect, if not save, Israel from potential destruction at the hands of Iranian missiles.
23:43So I'm not sure it's that clear.
23:47What Mr. Netanyahu knows is that he has infinitely more influence over what the Senate and the House will do in this instance than Trump does.
23:56Later on today, President Trump is going to announce, now as a graduate of the University of Notre Dame, this has a very specific meaning, Golden Dome.
24:10That is the main administration building at the top of which is a golden statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
24:17But he is going to announce some sort of a Golden Dome defensive mechanism to prevent drones and bombs and missiles from attacking the United States.
24:29Do we have that already?
24:31No, no, not at all.
24:33This is sort of a warmed-over, repackaged missile defense program on the scale that Reagan envisioned after he talked to Dr. Teller.
24:46And I actually heard Teller explain this in person back in 1986, and it was appalling.
24:56Everyone who was in the physics department that I knew, and one of whom was with me when we listened to him, told me, and I'm not a physicist, but this man that was, and he just said,
25:06Douglas, this is outrageous nonsense.
25:08We can't do it.
25:09We're still in the same position.
25:11What he's trying to argue is that you can have an Iron Dome-like solution that Israel has employed and employ it nationwide, or if not nationwide, then selectively for large urban areas.
25:26It depends on who you talk to.
25:27But the point is, the Iron Dome is by no means perfect, and it has been penetrated and will be penetrated in the future.
25:34So this is another money pit for lots of people who are very anxious to see this money flow.
25:41And I think they're on the Hill.
25:43I think they're in the Department of Defense and a number of other agencies across the federal government and, of course, across the country.
25:51Here's the rest of the story.
25:53It's not going to happen.
25:54We can't afford it.
25:56It's unattainable.
25:58It's back to this thing we used to refer to in the building as unobtainium.
26:02You can't break the laws of physics to get there and the laws of fractal mathematics.
26:08And that's the simple truth.
26:10So you're not going to get what they want.
26:12But, you know, whether or not you get something out of any of these programs is much less important than spending the money.
26:20You know, you go to the Hill and you ask, what do you do here?
26:22And everybody will tell you, well, we spend money.
26:25Right.
26:25That's why we're here.
26:28Colonel, is an American war with Iran inevitable?
26:32I hate to say that anything is inevitable, but it's going to be awfully tough to avoid.
26:39And that's why I think any number of things could happen.
26:42You could have a false flag.
26:44We've been through that before with the white helmets on the ground in Syria.
26:48And twice they managed to precipitate missile strikes.
26:51Fortunately, those missiles all went into the desert sand because somebody had the sense to realize if they go anywhere else, you're going to kill a lot of people and find yourself at war.
27:01This time around, I'm not sure that's possible.
27:04So I think you could have a false flag or you could simply have the decision.
27:08You know, we have been provoked long enough.
27:11It is an existential threat to greater Israel.
27:14And we are going to act.
27:16Mr. Netanyahu gives a speech and off it goes.
27:18And then we're dragged in anyway.
27:22Again, how do you bring peace about under those circumstances if we are a co-belligerent?
27:27We're back to the same problem we had today in Ukraine.
27:30How can you broker peace when you are, in fact, part of the problem?
27:35I don't think we can do that in Ukraine.
27:38I don't think we'll be able to do it in the Middle East.
27:39Colonel, thank you very much.
27:42Thank you for your time, my dear friend.
27:46I see that you are no longer running our country, our choice.
27:53I trust you left them in good hands and maybe you have more time on your hands.
27:58Oh, I think so.
27:59And, you know, Judge, I was there for over two years and I did the best I could.
28:03But I think and the people running it agreed that it was time for a fresh set of eyes.
28:09And that's something that you frequently need in any organization, somebody else with a new perspective that has fresh ideas.
28:16So you're right.
28:18Now I have a little more time available to me and I've got some other projects.
28:23We'll see where it goes.
28:24You and I will continue to cooperate, though.
28:26Oh, absolutely.
28:28Our collaboration has been has been a gift.
28:30And by the way, that episode, the second episode of the program that we were launching, that's almost complete.
28:37And that will be out.
28:38And I think people will be very, very happy to hear what you had to say about an important topic, because it's as you and I discussed, it's all about war.
28:46And the question is, how do we end up going to war so frequently?
28:50Yes.
28:51The conversation was about the concept of a just war and the concept of a constitutionally just war, which we haven't had since December 8th, 1941.
29:02Colonel, thank you very much for your time.
29:03Much appreciated.
29:04We'll see you again soon.
29:05Okay.
29:06Thanks, Judge.
29:06You're welcome.
29:07I'm a great human being and a true gift to you and to me that I can chat with him in a public arena like this.
29:17Coming up next at 3 o'clock this afternoon, Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski on all these same topics.
29:25Just the poll.
29:25We'll see you again soon.
29:55We'll see you again soon.
29:57We'll see you again soon.
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